“Beef tea, for the sick, is made by broiling a tender steak nicely, seasoning it with pepper and salt, cutting it up, and pouring water over it, not quite boiling. Put in a little water at a time, and let it stand to soak the goodness out.”
—The American Frugal Housewife
by Lydia Maria Child
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We like our internet. We like being able to get online and clickety click click wherever we like. We pay our monthly ISP fee and then click, the World Wide Web is world-wide open to us.
Some folks want to change that.
AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and other telephone and cable companies would like to be able to control the flow of information on the internet. Here’s how my hubby explains it:
The government is thinking about allowing Internet Service Providers to decide what websites you can or cannot go to, and who can or cannot send you emails. In other words, if this goes through, you may not be able to link to Left of the Dial* unless I’ve paid your specific ISP a fee. Otherwise I’ll get blackballed. Kinda like legalized payola.
* (Or, say, Spunky. Or FUN Books. Or even Google, if they haven’t paid up.)
Net Neutrality is the opposite of that scenario. Net Neutrality is what we’ve got now.
The telephone and cable companies are filling up congressional campaign coffers and hiring high-priced lobbyists. They’ve set up “Astroturf” groups like “Hands Off the Internet” to confuse the issue** and give the appearance of grassroots support.
Congress is now considering a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act. The primary bill in the House is called the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006” and is sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).
The current version of the COPE Act (HR 5252) includes watered-down Net Neutrality provisions that are essentially meaningless. An amendment offered by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), which would have instituted real Net Neutrality requirements, was defeated in committee after intense industry lobbying against it.
**Case in point: the ad in my sidebar. What it calls the truth isn’t really.
We mustn’t ignore this issue. You can read more about it here and here.
Tags: net neutrality
I just read a press release from the Institute of Museum and Library Services about their partnership with the NEA (Endowment for the Arts, not Education Association) to launch of a “new national reading program designed to revitalize the role of reading in America.”
“Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America” a 2004 National Arts Endowment report, documented a dramatic decline in literary reading—among all age groups, ethnic groups, and education levels – and galvanized a national discussion. The Big Read was developed to help reverse this trend by giving citizens in more than 100 communities in all 50 states an inviting opportunity to read and discuss great books. Each city or town that participates will host a community-wide read that involves collaborations with libraries, schools, local government, and the private sector.
The Institute will contribute $1 million in the first year of the national program and cast America’s libraries and librarians in a central role to encourage community participation.
Hmm. I am curious about how exactly the IMLS and NEA plan to go about “revitalizing the role of reading in America.” The release states that they will give grants of $10-20,000 to “more than 100 communities to conduct programs that encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.” I am all for helping jazz people up about reading, and I’m also all for giving money to libraries. But. Um. Programs that encourage people to read for pleasure and enlightenment? That sounds an awful lot like the very nice book club my (teeny tiny underfunded) local branch library offers already. I doubt it costs $10,000 to run it, even counting the fliers.
If you have a better (and more expensive) idea than a book club, the IMLS encourages you to submit a proposal.
HT: Anastasia Suen.
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Kristie asks:
One quick question…
Language arts…looking at your day, do your kids write, do dictation, read etc. or is this in tides (besides the reading, it is obvious that is the lifestyle in homes where literature is loved..)
I can tell you what we do, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to go to for advice on this subject because I think Scott and I tend to take a lot for granted when it comes to helping our children become good writers. Writing is a way of life around here. The kids see us writing, read our writing at various stages of completion, and hear a lot of talk about story structure, characterization, and revision. It’s difficult for me to parse out exactly what they’re learning. It’s like trying to pick onions out of your soup: they’ve already imparted their flavor to the broth.
So that’s the disclaimer, but here are some things we have done. First and by far the most important: the reading aloud. I absolutely cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of reading aloud, lots and lots and lots, even after the child is a fluent and eager reader herself. Just keep picking books a little beyond her reading ability; keep stretching her powers of comprehension. This is how to expand the vocabulary and instill a sense of what ‘sounds right,’ which takes one a long way toward the mastery of correct grammar.
Next most important (in my opinion): Narration. Even at my unschooliest, I am an advocate of gently eliciting narrations from your children. Get them to tell a story back to you after you’ve read it aloud, or after a child has read it to himself. “Tell me what you remember,” “Tell me everything you know about volcanoes,” “What happened to Tintin after he got on the boat?” Narration improves the memory and accustoms the speaker to putting events and ideas into words.
Charlotte Mason recommends waiting until age ten or so to begin asking the child for written narrations. Until that point, all narration is oral. When Jane was little, I did (as many homeschooling moms do) a lot of transcribing the narrations she dictated to me; I printed them out, got her to illustrate them, put them together in a notebook. I know this works beautifully for a lot of people, and I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing it if it brings joy to you and your child. But I’ll say this: don’t feel obligated to write down your child’s oral narrations. Don’t feel like you have to make a notebook or else you’re not doing it properly. After a year or two of compiling Jane’s narration notebook, I realized the whole process had become for us an exercise in creating a product. Jane was beginning to be proud of her notebook, or perhaps “prideful” is a better word; she had seen me show it off enough times that she too began to view her work as something to be shown off, something done for the purposes of impressing one’s friends and relations. I was horrified by this little epiphany. Of course it was completely my fault. I ditched the habit of typing out her oral narrations; for a time, I ditched narrating altogether. When we returned to it, it was to the simple Charlotte Mason method of asking the child to “tell it back”—no notebook, no product to display.
What I found that was that in addition to curing our little show-off problem, this took away the pressure that had turned narration into a burden. No longer was it necessary for me to be prepared to scribble down her words as fast as she said them: I could listen to her narrate with a baby in my arms. And instead of the type—print—illustrate—bind production line, narration could lead to discussion. The whole experience became warmer, richer, and her narrations improved. Her memory improved; her appetite for ideas increased. I’d read aloud, she’d tell it back, we’d chat about the people in the stories and the problems they encountered.
So this is how narration works in our house today. Rose is narrating now, too, and Beanie frequently chimes in, unsolicited. When Jane turned ten I began asking for occasional written narrations. Currently she is writing two or three a week. I give her something to read, a chapter of Famous Men of Rome, perhaps, and ask her to read it only once, carefully, and then write out everything she can remember. We go over any spelling or grammatical errors together.
I don’t use spelling or grammar curricula; I simply keep an eye on what sort of mistakes the children make and offer bits of instruction as indicated. (And of course grammar comes up in our Latin and ASL studies.) Rose, however, is one of those workbook-loving kids, so I keep a spelling workbook on hand to satisfy her occasional cravings for nice little blanks to fill in.
We go through spells of doing copywork, all of us: if the children see me taking the trouble to copy out quotes into my commonplace book, they become interested in doing it themselves. I encourage them to record their favorite poems, but I very seldom require it. I find that supplying them with nice notebooks and enticing gel pens is incentive enough.
As for writing curricula, I have reviewed many of them and have disliked most. Scripted writing exercises leave me cold. The program I do like is BraveWriter; you can read my thoughts on that here. I have just received a copy of Classical Writing (the Homer book) and will talk more about it after I’ve had a chance to read it (and work with it) a bit.
Last thing: we are big fans of word games around here! Mad Libs, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, riddles, and so on. And Schoolhouse Rock
The “homeschools her whole brood” is me. I mean I.
Details to come…
What with yesterday being our wedding anniversary AND Mother’s Day AND the baby’s one-month-birthday if you’re keeping track of such things, there was a bit of nostalgia on the air around here last night. Scott was ransacking the house looking for a tape on which to record the final episode of West Wing (sob! more nostalgia!) and he happened upon what seems to have been our first baby-video ever. We vaguely remember making this tape; Jane was maybe six weeks old and we borrowed a camcorder from our neighbors so as to record the Many Exciting Things she was doing. Drooling! Waving her arms! Staring blankly at the camera! Staring blankly at the orange plastic bear hanging from the baby gym thing! (Notice how carefully it is positioned, not directly above her, oh noooo, we were far too savvy for that, you have to hang it a little to one side so that it dangles above baby’s arm instead of her nose, all the best books say so. Notice too that she is not lying flat upon the floor, oh nooooooo, that would be poor technique; you must put baby in her little terrycloth bouncy chair so that she is reclining at an angle for best plastic-bear-swatting results. Now she is positioned for optimum bear attack. All you, earnest parent, must do is wait. And wait. Don’t forget to turn on the camcorder. You don’t want to miss a single whacking of the bear. Oh look! It’s about to happen, her arm is twitching! It’s moving, waving—nay, it is actually flailing about! HONEY LOOK SHE’S ALMOST HITTING IT!!! ARE YOU GETTING THIS ON TAPE? LOOK!! SHE CAME SO CLOSE THAT TIME! THE BEAR ACTUALLY SWAYED IN THE BREEZE CAUSED BY HER FLAILING ARM! FOR PITY’S SAKE DON’T STOP TAPING!!!!)
We had hours of this stuff. Hours of closeups on Jane’s infant face. Every tiny shift of expression made the new parents behind the camera gasp or giggle or coo. We listened to ourselves rhapsodize over this small miracle we seemed desperate to capture on film lest her magical feats disappear from history without a record. There must be twenty minutes of tape devoted to watching her sleep. On the bed, on the sofa, in my arms, on the floor, oh there she is on the bed again!
Watching the tape, Scott and I were convulsed with laughter at our new-parent obsessiveness, but the girls were enchanted. At first they all thought it was our new baby, their baby. It’s true that when Scott first popped the tape into the VCR, the resemblance between our firstborn and our fifthborn took my breath away. For the longest time, I could not see Jane at all: it was like I was watching a video we might have made yesterday. (Except we wouldn’t. We are too old and jaded. Alas for the new baby, there shall be no visual record of the first time she whacks at a dangling plastic bear. I don’t think we even possess any plastic bears suitable for dangling. I’m pretty sure the baby gym migrated to Good Will sometime between Beanie and Wonderboy. Oh, the tragedy, this poor deprived infant.)
Jane didn’t recognize the apartment in the video. We moved when she was four, but I thought it might look vaguely familiar. It didn’t, except for the blue tablecloth which is still on our table, and the red and white quilt which still goes on our bed in winter, and the bookshelves which are still unfinished. Even my hair looked exactly the same. Scott still plays some of those same songs on his guitar. I still get a kick out of the little o a baby’s mouth sometimes makes.
Jane and I have finally decided upon a blog name for the new baby. After weeks of discussion, during which such possibilities as Daisy, Joy, and Stellina (yes, we liked the book that much), we hit upon a name we like as much as those and which just seems to fit. Henceforth (cue trumpets) she shall be known as Rilla. Jane likes it because A) it’s pretty and B) she loves Rilla of Ingleside perhaps even a little more than her beloved Jane of Lantern Hill. I like it, of course, because it allows me to further indulge my lifelong secret desire to be Anne of Green Gables. Now that I’m all grown up I must be Anne of Ingleside and have my own little Rilla. So. It’s official. Because, you know, anything you announce on your blog becomes Official, if you say so. We are all officials now, so long as we have an ISP.
Ah, little Rilla! Your parents have learned how to edit baby videos, and no longer do we have endless hours to devote to patient anticipation of your first attempts to touch a toy. When you sleep, we cannot hover in silence with the camera, capturing each tiny sigh, each cryptic expression flitting across your face. When you sleep, we do not even tell the other children to be quiet: you must learn from the outset to sleep through the clamor. There will never not be a clamor in your home.
But there will be kisses. Already I think your kisses-received tally tops your siblings’, and that’s from Wonderboy alone. He likes to kiss the top of your head and then press his cheek against you and say “Awww”—because, you know, that’s the hug noise. We will try to catch this on tape at least once.
But don’t get your hopes up about the bear.
“Gentleness, patience, and love, are almost everything in education; especially to those helpless little creatures, who have just entered into a world where everything is new and strange to them. Gentleness is a sort of mild atmosphere; and it enters into a child’s soul, like the sunshine into the rose-bud, slowly but surely expanding it into beauty and vigor.”
—from The Mother’s Book
by Lydia Maria Child
Somedays it takes forever to read even a short little tale. Somedays: the best days.
Like this morning. I was going to read the girls the first part of the Romulus and Remus story—just Part II of Chapter 1 of Famous Men of Rome. They asked, as they sometimes do, if I would tell it instead of read it. In general I prefer for them to hear stories in polished prose, not my off-the-cuff improvised versions, but I do understand the appeal of the “told” story, and I try to keep a little store of tales on the tip of my tongue in order to oblige their requests.
(Truth be told, I used to be much better about this—about keeping my brain supplied with tales to tell. As more children came along I got so busy and my mind grew cluttered and I wasn’t remembering folk and fairy tales in all the rich detail they deserve. I mean, just because I can write stories doesn’t mean they come tripping effortlessly off my tongue at a moment’s notice. The delete key, the long musing stare out the window, these are my bosom friends.
Then one day, with a brutal little twist of the knife, one of my daughters sighingly lamented that her mother never told stories like Martha’s mum did. As in: Martha Morse, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s great-grandmother, about whom I have written several novels. My Martha, being regaled by stories I made up, stories told to her by a mother every bit as much a figment of my imagination as her tale about the water fairy of Loch Caraid. Oh, the guilt! Those who can’t do, write about? This is definitely my motto when it comes to, say, cooking (Martha grows up to be a fabulous if prone-to-mishap cook) and spinning and making clothes. But to stretch it to story-telling seemed too ridiculous a bit of irony, so I have taken steps to redeem myself from this deplorable deficit, and now I can supply a yarn in the grand oral tradition upon request. Moral of the story: Do not invent fictional characters who are nicer mothers than you; or if you do, don’t let your own children read the books.)
But I digress. Which is, of course, the theme of this post. So anyway, I’m telling the story of Romulus and Remus, but I get barely two sentences into it when I’m interrupted by one of those gasps which are my Absolute Favorite Part of homeschooling. I’ve just described the ousting of King Numitor from the throne by his ‘surper brother, Amulius.
“Hey, that’s just like As You Like It!” cries Jane. “Wasn’t it the Duke’s younger brother who usurped the throne there too?”
“Or like in Prince Caspian,” says Rose. “Except the usurper wasn’t his brother, it was his uncle, I think.”
“Usurp, usurp, usurp!” chirps Beanie, just because. “Hey, Absolom usurped too!” (Sigh, I miss her surp.)
We pull ourselves back to the tale at hand. I get to the part where Numitor’s daughter is forced to become a priestess of Vesta, a Vestal Virgin, under oath not to marry for thirty years. One of her duties is to tend the Sacred Fire which must be kept burning on the altar of Vesta, lest dire consequences befall the city of Alba.
This time the gasp of recognition is Rose’s, but Jane hijacks her connection.
“That’s like the sacred fire in the story of the Maccabees! You know, the story about how Hannukah got started?”
We abandon poor Sylvia for a brief retelling of the Hannukah story (and a diaper change). Then I return to my tale, but I get barely a sentence farther before Mars comes down from his lofty palace and spies young Silvia, falling instantly in love. This cues a chorus of “Like Danae and Zeus” from my three young Greek myth fans. They’re getting into the game now, beginning to seek out connections instead of tumbling into them.
And there are so many, many connections to be found. I like to keep lists of them. Here’s what I can remember of the girls’ interjections this morning:
“Hey, Sylvia, that’s like “sil-va, sil-vae” in Jane’s Latin! It means forest.” (Says Bean, who is a great fan of the chant CD that goes with Jane’s Latin for Children book.) “Mommy, is it bad that Sylvia broke her vowel?”
(Launching a discussion, once the laughter subsides, about whether it is right or wrong to break a vow made under duress.)
When Sylvia’s twin babies are put into a basket and tossed into the Tiber, this naturally sparks a mention of Moses. Also Perseus, who is of course still on their minds from the Danae reference above. Also a story from the Arabian Nights, “The Bird Who Speaks,” in which certain babies are tossed into a river by a wicked auntie and subsequently rescued by a nice old couple.
The twins’ adoption by the she-wolf reminds Rose of Mowgli. Jane thinks the story is similar to Snow White, because the person directed by the evil ruler to kill the innocent child or children—a huntsman in Snow White, a herdsman in the Roman tale—doesn’t follow orders exactly, and the victims are saved from death.
Somehow this all makes Beanie think of Hercules—because “the joke was on the king” (she means Amulius) “just like the joke was on the giant” (she means Atlas). It’s a stretch, but I’m intrigued by the connection. And a moment later, when I tell of rightful king Numitor living in obscurity as a farmer, Rose says it reminds her of Britain’s King Alfred hiding out from the Saxons in a shepherd’s hut: “You know, the time he burned the cakes.”
It’s not that they’re geniuses, you know; most of these references are stories they’ve listened to on CD. A couple of years ago we had the immense good fortune to come into possession of the entire collection of Jim Weiss story CDs. (Of course we’re now missing some titles, for he has released several enticing new story collections in the past two years.) Of the stories mentioned above, about half of them entered my girls’ store of knowledge via Jim Weiss. (Which is why I link to him so often.)
Sometimes the road from A to B involves detours through a couple thousand years of oral tradition. Those are the trips I like best.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is not shaken:
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Loves’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom,
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—William Shakespeare
Today is our twelfth wedding anniversary! We call it the birthday of our family—certainly the best birthday of my life. Truly have we looked upon some tempests and not been shaken, and for that I credit my good sense in marrying a man with an unquenchable sense of humor. Also he gives excellent footrubs.
